Sun Outages affecting Cable TV

Indytel Cable Customers:

We’ve started to experience “Sun Outages” to our cable system and they could last this entire week. Please read the explanation below. Sun outages or solar interference occurs every February/March and September/October of each year.

What is a Sun Outage?

A sun outage is an interruption in or distortion of satellite signals caused by interference from solar radiation. As the sun’s path across the sky gets lower each day, there are times when it’s in a direct line behind a communication satellite that is sending programming signals to a receiving satellite dish on Earth. The effects are seen on most channels and occur during various times of the day, lasting up to 15 minutes.

Impacts to Service

You may experience short service interruptions this fall, including:

Sparkles in the first days of the sun outage timeframe. It may gradually deteriorate to the point of total outage.

Blocks or freeze frames in the picture before and after peak times.

Unfortunately, there is technically nothing that can be done to prevent sun outage effects. Please note that sun outages are not TV outages.

If any group of channels is affected for more than 15 minutes, or if all channels are affected at one time, there may be a problem that is unrelated to sun outages. If you need assistance, please contact us at 332-0100.

Note: Sun outages don’t affect Internet or Telephone services.

Thank you for your patience, while we know it’s frustrating, there is nothing we can do.